Two Roads // a single focus

I still don’t know what I want to talk about from last week, but I will tell you about a conversation I had today about leadership. Now, this analogy is not completely fleshed out, but we’ll see where it goes and you can tell me if you think its bogus or not. Perhaps you know how much I like to talk about leadership at random…this is one of those conversations.

That’s a picture of two roads diverging in a wood. For the sake of the argument, the color of said “wood” is arbitrary, but we’ll agree that it is yellow. These two roads represent two paths that a leader could follow and lead a group of people. Suppose that said leader decides, “these two roads appear parallel, I think I can lead people down both paths since they can’t agree on which one to take and they are both appealing. I will hop back and forth between these paths and lead these people forward.”

So, said leaders moves forward down path A with a group and tells the people going down path B to wait. Leader travels a ways with group A and tells them, “Wait here while I go back and grab group B and lead them down the path a little ways.” So, our leader has to retrace his steps, and then go down uncharted territory until he is in roughly the same position as he is with group A. He then has to either go back down the path and back up path A, or he must travel through the woods which can be rather treacherous. He then must repeat the steps that have been laid out above. He also must factor in that both paths are different and the people are now experiencing different things and he must therefore relate to each group differently. (Also, though the path looks like it is parallel to begin with, it has diverged quite radically.) This causes great stress on the leader and the people. The leader because he is exhausted. The people because they are having to stand still and wait every so often and then try and understand the leader who is attempting to apply principles to one path that he learned on the other path which are not transferable. Its all a jumbled mess.

This is why I feel so blessed and happily serve a pastor who is committed to one vision and does not waver between paths, but rather empowers leaders to help him encourage a group of people down the same path at different speeds. That’s focus.

Go ahead…pick it apart.